The pond loves an irony, and the reptiles keep feeding the pond's sensa huma by poignant juxtaposition, with this effort outstanding …
But that Trumpian move, and the scramble that followed, could just as easily have been put side by side with the bromancer's tremendous bout of Trumpian logic, so the pond will get to the doggy lover later ...
The pond recently enjoyed a review in the NYRB of P.T. Barnum's life, American Humbug (sorry, inside the paywall), which also went by the title of P.T. Barnum's Fake News Circus …indicating that by the end, a comparison would be made between the original snake oil salesman, and his successor in the White House …
In the same way as it once fell for carny acts at the Tamworth show, the pond is a sucker for spruikers, which explains why the pond still has affection for a carny spruiker of the bromancer kind, doing his best to keep the Donald in play ...
What makes the bromancer so irresistible? Well there's the chance to run relevant cartoons …
But there's also the splendid sight of the bromancer dumping on the Churchillian Boris while attempting a redemption of the Donald ...
Ah, the good old China travel ban. Like most things the Donald has done, it wasn't much a part of the grand American tradition. The bone spurs man getting it right and up for the fight?
Not likely, at least for anyone who can google, with everyone from the Daily Snail to the NY Times to Fox News carrying the figures, which were apparently too elusive and tricky for the bromancer to find …
Damn you google, why must you make it so hard to find triumphant stories about the bone spurs man. Is it some kind of global conspiracy?
Never mind, the thing about the bromancer the pond loves is his ability to find hope and light at the end of the tunnel, even if sometimes it's something of a long tunnel.
So he must recite the errors, in approved Chairman Mao style, and then despite all the flaws and the failings, fall back into the reptile line and find redemption, and hope and perhaps some light up the rectum in November … please, marvel at his skill.
There were also the catastrophic fires, five of them, that destroyed Barnum’s museums, circuses, and most opulent estate, yielding horrors equal in their majesty to any of his exhibitions: the pair of squealing white whales burned alive after their tank was shattered in a failed effort to douse the flames; the escaped tiger roaming the streets of lower Manhattan in a snowstorm; the white elephant that, having been led to safety, repeatedly charged back into the inferno in frantic determination to commit suicide.
Carnage in Barnum land! What's not to love?
A pity the Darwin awards have been cancelled this year from the surfeit of top competitors … but please, on with the Barnum circus ...
You see. Who else could scribble that the Donald is not an authoritarian leader, "but a fully democratic one"? Because losing the popular vote and getting elected by an arcane electoral college is fully democratic?
Who else could scribble that the Donald's sociopathic ramblings are less harmful than they sound? Who else could invoke Wagner, as if inviting a breaking of Godwin's Law and a celebration of white nationalism? Who else could suggest that the results in the US haven't been spectacularly bad, and then go on to explain that compared to Australia, they have been spectacularly bad, and SloMo has been positively brilliant?
Is any of this logic possible to understand?
Here the pond must revert to the immortal Rowe for an explanation … with more explanations here …
Yes that explains everything, and it also helps in explaining this amazing set of bromancer contortions ...
What a litany and now in the bromancer's final gobbet, here it comes.
The classic Trumpian ploy. Blame someone else. Mock someone else ...
Anyone else … we all know how it works, because that's the art of the con, that's the art of the snake oil salesman … and in the end, the bromancer really does want to believe, because his kissing cousins at Fox News remain devout, and so does his chairman …
Sorry Obama, this week for the bromancer, it's Cuomo … and his "alleged" allegations because comparing Florida with New York is yet another example of the bromancer's stunning logic ...
Well, if the reptiles succeed and get the Donald re-elected, they won't just be fucking the United States and the planet … they might just be in trouble in their war on China.
Remember the Donald's loose lips trying to sink the F-35 ships?
Cue the dog botherer, busy keeping up the war with China ...
Actually the pond cringes at the reptiles and the Donald, with Rowe providing a cringeworthy sight …
And any Australian manufacturer involved in F-35s might be cringing too … but luckily we won't need planes, the dog botherer's bully boofhead bluster will surely be enough to get Xi quivering in his boots….
Ah delusions of grandeur syndrome, of the Lord Downer kind, which led to such spectacular success in places such as Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan …
Now for some reason, the reptiles felt the need to interrupt the dog botherer with a graph …a good Trumpian attempt to remind us that China was the villain in all that's gone down ...
They could have done a better job with the graph … how about this one here …
Minor istractions out of the way, it's back to the dog botherer's delusions of grandeur ...
By golly those delusions of grandeur are strong in this one … though strangely, this pride in a multicultural multifaceted political life always seems to stop short of leftism. Let's face it anything or anyone to the left of Genghis Khan doesn't have a place in the dog botherer's multicultural triumph.
But the pond is pleased at the way the dog botherer tossed in "in a land of indigenous heritage", as if the doggy lover and his followers have done anything other than whinge and moan and whine since Mabo dropped on them ...
The "deputy sheriff" taunt? Well it's true it's insulting, we fancied ourselves as the sheriff … it was those bloody Yanks that kept calling us deputies …
Old colonial associations? But we don't want to be subservient and eternally bullied, we need to stand up for ourselves.
Hmmm, F-35s not quite working out?
Send a gunboat, two if necessary, the pond says, oh they don't like a stout gunboat with a plucky dog botherer for crew, no they won't like a French submarine up 'em in 2050 …
Oh dammit, those old colonial associations again, when the pond should be celebrating the Donald …
And so to the dog botherer's final gobbet ...
Ah yes, poor Donald, how deceived and tricked he was … and yet somehow he managed to keep on being tricked and deceived right up to the end of February, which is why the pond always loves to link to 15 times Trump praised China as coronavirus was spreading across the globe …
And now to something that the pond has never done before.
The pond is aware of the art of the hook and the teaser, the prospective delight that keeps readers coming back … the good old Saturday matinee cliffhanger …
The pond is aware that readers are falling by the wayside like flies, especially when eyes glaze over at the news that the reptile war on China will continue …
But the pond swears it on the skull of its ancient reptile ancestors …
… that the war on China will take a quantum leap on the morrow …
And as living proof that what the pond says is true, the pond offers a sneak preview of tomorrow's delights ...
You see? The war on China blessed by the cult master himself, and nattering "Ned" ready to bore readers and Xi into total submission … what more could anyone want, except for those cheats, who satisfied by the cult master sighting, will stay slumped in their Sunday beds ...
But for the moment, the pond must sign off, with a splendid cartoon by the infallible Pope, which doesn't have much to do with today's reptile offerings, and yet in a strange, ineluctable way involving damned statistics and the probability of lies, also does …
Incredible ! The Bromancer says of Trump that: "He has consistently talked the most bizarre rubbish." which "...even his most ardent supporters surely cannot defend."
ReplyDeleteDefend ? They'd be (un)lucky if they can understand any of it. Fortunately, help is on line:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/14/trump-lip-sync-video-memes-sarah-cooper-tiktoks-interview
The Bromancer says of the "authoritarian" Bolsonaro: "One by one his senior cabinet ministers resign or get the sack as the President opposes his own government's health regulations."
ReplyDeleteFunny, I would have sworn he was saying that about Trump. But then we go all international: "The Russian people are seeing there are intractable realities of the physical universe that their strongman leader cannot bend to his will after all." By contrast, the American people don't see any limits to Trump at all.
But really, who daet dreesnya what the Russians think of Vladimir Vladimirovich - certainly he doesn't. But plowing right on, the Bromancer informs us that: "Beijing's catastrophic early mishandling of the virus has brought the first serious questioning of Xi Jinping's authority within the Chinese leadership elite."
Really ? I wonder who the Bromancer's informant was/is ? His contacts even penetrate the Chinese "leadership elite" ? And what's this about "catastrophic early mishandling" ? The Chinese have achieved one of the more successful virus resistances: yes, they were a bit slow off the mark, but once they got moving they imposed one of the most comprehensive and rigorous shutdowns (welded doors anybody ?) and shoved as many likely infected folk as they could onto aeroplanes and sent them off out and away from China. Many going to America. 430,000 according to some counts. Another Trump triumph.
But at the end, the Bromancer offers one of the famous reptile prophecies: "But eventually he'll [Biden] have to come out and fight Trump hand to hand." Oh wau, Bidengate ! I just can't wait. On the other hand, d'you think either of them will expire from either senility or coronavirus before then ?
Then we get to the Doggy Boverer who wants to explain to us that we are a "significant country with global interests and not just a regional player." Frankly, I would have said that we aren't even a regional player.
But oh, just think how incredibly powerful we'll be after we get some obsolete French conventional subs in maybe 15 to 20 years. Oh how "the region" will tremble before our magnificence then. And we will greatly admire Doggy Bov for having foreseen it all. Even "the left" (and maybe even "the green left") will abase themselves and acknowledge Doggy Bov's greater wisdom.
However, according to Michael Shoebridge (who ?) some nation "repressed information, prevented action and didn't ask for international help" and "inflicted suffering and death on their own people..." Which nation was that, again ?
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteSo this weekend according to Kenny, Australia is one of the big boys, punching above its weight, a significant country not just a regional player;
“This is more than rhetoric — the UN has 193 member nations and Australia ranks as the 14th largest economy, the sixth largest land mass, with a population ranked about 50th and a military assessed as the 15th most powerful. Look at it this way: on such metrics, we sit in the 90th percentile of nations.”
However only last weekend it was a much different story from the Dog Botherer. The Land of Oz was a minnow, a mediocrity, a non-entity whose contribution was insignificant and worthless;
“This all underscores the scientific absurdity that anything the Australian federation can agree to do on emissions reduction policies can make the slightest difference to global atmospheric conditions or improve the climate in Australia or anywhere else.”
What a difference a week makes.
DiddyWrote
Hi, DW.
DeleteIndeed differences are coming thick and fast of late, aren't they. Looking to when the combination of coronavirus and the Chinese withdrawal really closes down the Australian economy. We really won't be contributing much to climate change then. But I wonder what, if anything, we will be contributing to anything.
Oh I do hope it happens soon so I can "pass on" gracefully before they run out of money to pay my pension.
GB - I believe I heard that dog parks are now open. Many opportunities again for dog bovvering; surely that will distract your dedicated bovverer, perhaps to reduce the time he spends recycling the standard phrases.
ReplyDeleteand on recycling - my source tells me the Chairlifeform for the IPA must have set some minion there on extracting figures for how much of that dreadful stuff - money - various law firms have made out of what she still calls, for convenience, 'class actions'. Enough to utter up another column for the Flagship this weekend, only a couple of days after the previous rant.
The minion has also turned up evidence that some Labor MPs have been associated with these firms. The Chair etc. seems shocked to have to relate that MPs of a particular party have such links. Why, the IPA would never - oh, that's right . .
Other Anonymous
Hi OA,
DeleteI wonder if the ChairDame for the IPA wishes to restore the crimes of Maintenance and Champerty to the statute book?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Champerty_and_maintenance
https://corrs.com.au/insights/queensland-supreme-court-confirms-legality-of-litigation-funding-agreements-in-class-actions
And for good measure;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barratry_(common_law)
DW
I suppose when something has been around as long as "law", there's bound to be heaps of very recondite stuff, most of which I for one have never heard of. So very informative indeed DW. Thank you.
DeleteHaving mulled it a bit OA, I'm reminded that Dame Slippy Slap has preached against the use of 'lawfare' in the past. And of course it's all part of that long-established theme that goes: "When I do it, it's holy; when you do it, it's devilish" that the IPA runs with repeatedly.
DeleteEither that, or the IPA want to get some "donations" from the bigger law firms.
I do wonder though if any of them, back in the nicotine tube heyday, ever actually smoked.
DW - thank you for those references. I had not encountered 'Champerty' before. A quick check, but it does not appear in the index of my volumes of Braudel.
ReplyDeleteDelightful sound, interesting derivation, and the new thing I have learned today.
Other Anonymous
The bromancer should stick to his knitting and not dabble as a music critic. Wagner's music sounds stupendous.
ReplyDeleteEspecially this bit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoDpTYDxvq8
Delete